Quote from hermit:
Having been a moderator as well as an admin on other boards, let me coach you on how a reasonable moderation policy operates.
When you find a poster who has gone out of line, you "Infract" the poster and send him a PM explicity mentioning what rule he has violated. Second time, you warn him or issue a temporrary ban for a few days. Third time, you permanently ban the poster. This way you have a log of what exactly transpired and there is no confusion among mods and admins.
Ofcourse, since all this is totally out of line with your seat of the pants moderating where regular members get banned for no reason while serial trolls operate freely, all this is not going to make sense. And if someone points out the obvious fallacy of your high-handed moderation then its his fault for opening his mouth. How do they point out glaring mistakes without being perfect, some nerve.